A day after suspending Guy Adams’ — a British journalist who had repeatedly criticized NBC’s Olympics coverage — Twitter account, the microblogging service has reinstated him and restored his old tweets after much public outcry.
Twitter had initially reported Adams to his employer, NBC, for allegedly tweeting on its executives e-mail addresses.
Many see the swift reversal of the initial suspension as a wise move. Failure to do so would not have been in Twitter’s best interest as it would have been perceived to push for censorship of its users.
Also of interest is a rare move by the microblogging service where its general counsel, Alex McGillivray, — and not a staff member — seemed to apologise on behalf the company.
McGillivray goes at length to explain Twitter’s initial decision to suspend Adams and explains the company’s process for reinstating users accused of Terms of Service violations.
He also apologises for the alleged deception where Twitter had initially reported that it was NBC that filed for Adams’ suspension, instead he confirms that a Twitter team working closely with NBC on the Olympics alerted NBC to Adams’ tweet and encouraged the network to file a complaint — apparently a breach of Twitter’s own internal policies.
He concludes by saying, “As I stated earlier, we do not proactively report or remove content on behalf of other users no matter who they are. This behaviour is not acceptable and undermines the trust our users have in us.
“We should not and cannot be in the business of proactively monitoring and flagging content, no matter who the user is — whether a business partner, celebrity or friend. As of earlier today, the account has been unsuspended, and we will actively work to ensure this does not happen again.”
